_________________________________________ Tony Blair’s ‘new doctrine of international

community’ and the UK decision to invade

Iraq

Dr Jason Ralph _________________________________________ POLIS Working Paper No. 20 August 2005

Tony Blair’s ‘new doctrine of international community’ and the UK

decision to invade Iraq.

Dr. Jason Ralph.1

Introduction

In seeking to explain why the UK supported the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003 one can

identify two sets of general arguments. The first set sees UK support as the consequence of

its policy on Iraq, which independently evolved beyond the discredited policy of containment

and settled on military invasion as the lesser evil. From this perspective the UK, and Prime

Minister Blair in particular, had in fact reached the conclusion that regime change was the

only possible solution to the threat posed by Iraq before the Bush administration had made

definite decision to use military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein.2 If anything Blair was

ahead of policy change in the White House and would have been pushing for a tougher

approach had the Bush administration not been willing to move beyond containment. The

second set of arguments sees UK support as a consequence not so much of its policy towards

Iraq but more directly related to its policy on Bush’s America. From this perspective

independent British assessments of the Iraqi threat, which were much less alarmist, were put

to one side once it became clear that the Bush administration was serious about overthrowing

Saddam Hussein’s regime. When it became clear that the transatlantic rift was too wide to

bridge, a traditional Atlanticist and, some argue, imperialist view of the UKs role reasserted

itself.3

If the reasons why the UK supported the US led invasion of Iraq are disputed, what is

clear is that the UK was determined to gain UN authorisation for such action. Of course the

British government did go to war claiming that they had such authorisation and that the war

was indeed legal. Yet on two occasions prior to reaching that conclusion – in the summer of

2002 and then in February 2003 – it had decided that additional resolutions were in fact

needed to give the coalition explicit authorisation to invade Iraq. The failure to achieve this,

firstly in Resolution 1441 of November 2002 and secondly in the non-resolution of March

1 The author would like to thank the following for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter: Christoph Bluth, Michael Denison, Dan Jones, Rachel Kerr, Maureen Ramsey, Rhiannon Vickers and Paul Williams. The opinions expressed, and any errors committed, are those of the author. 2 See for example, Paul Williams, British Foreign Policy under New Labour, 1997-2004, forthcoming; also Christoph Bluth, ‘The British Road to war: Blair, Bush and the decision to invade Iraq’, International Affairs Vol.80 No.5 October 2004, pp.876-879. 3 See for example David Coates and Joel Krieger (with Rhiannon Vickers), Blair’s War, Polity, 2004; see also Tim Dunne in ‘“When the shooting starts”: Atlanticism in British security strategy’, International Affairs, Vol.80 No.5, October 2004, pp.893-909.

2

2003, was a significant diplomatic defeat for the UK. It has since led to the accusation that,

contrary to government advice, the UK fought an illegal war.4 What is explored in this

chapter is why the UK felt it necessary to pursue this course of action and thus open itself up

to such a charge. If it had independently reached the conclusion that the UN containment

regime was failing or if it was willing to give the US its unqualified support in the face of

significant public and parliamentary opposition, why did the UK initially insist that the new

policy receive additional UN sanction? Why did it not assume, like many in the Bush

administration, that the coalition had all the authority it needed either in previous resolutions

or in an argument of self-defence?5

The answer lies in the broader ideological differences of the two states. While some in

the US, not least the Secretary of State Colin Powell, wished to use the UN as a means of

building the kind of international coalition that he considered desirable, it was never

considered that the US would not go to war without explicit authorisation from the UN. In

the UK, however, powerful constituencies were unwilling to support the invasion without

additional UN Security Council resolutions. Large sections of the British public, Members of

Parliament, cabinet ministers, parts of the Foreign Office and even the military could not

support a war that would be classed as illegal. While many of these ultimately accepted the

Attorney General’s opinion of March 2003, which stated that the coalition had a mandate

based on the revived authority of previous Security Council resolutions, it was clear that prior

to that date many considered this argument to be insufficient. Blair may have shared the neo-

conservative view of the Iraqi threat, but he did not share their political capacity to ignore the

UN when finding new ways of addressing it.

That the Prime Minister certainly felt the political (and arguably an intellectual) need to

seek explicit UN authorisation for military action can be explained by a view of global

politics which he himself had done so much to cultivate. This view sees international

relations in terms of an international society where states have rights and responsibilities that

were articulated by international law.6 It is different to the Realist view of international

relations as an anarchic power struggle where states merely have competing interests. To be

consistent with this view and to carry significant parts of British opinion with him Blair

needed a UN mandate for military action that would achieve his aim of regime change in Iraq.

4 Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger, ‘Iraq war was illegal and breached the UN Charter says Annan’, The Guardian 16 September, 2004. 5 The argument that the US had ‘the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf’ was expressed to President Clinton in a letter signed by, among others, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton dated 26 January 1998. <http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm>. 6 The distinction between international ‘society’ and international ‘community’, which is made in some social sciences, is not considered relevant to this particular analysis. For a discussion on how this

3

Only then could he convincingly argue that Operation Iraqi Freedom was the action of a

responsible great power which deserved his support.

But if the British emphasis on ‘international community’ can explain why Blair felt the

need to get additional UN resolutions, how can it explain his decision to go to war having

failed to secure a resolution that explicitly authorised the use of force? The answer to this

question lies in understanding both the evolution of US-UK policy on Iraq and Blair’s own

particular understanding, some might say misunderstanding, of the concept of international

community. Blair first gave explicit reference to a ‘doctrine of international community’ in

his speech to the Economic Club of Chicago on 22nd April, 1999. At that time NATO was

bombing Yugoslavia in what Blair described as ‘a just war, based not on any territorial

ambitions but on values.’7 That Blair could argue this when NATO’s action against

Yugoslavia had not received explicit authorisation from the UN Security Council revealed

that at least for Blair the ‘international community’ was not synonymous with great power

unanimity at the Security Council. More specifically, if Security Council action was blocked

by the unreasonable behaviour of one permanent member (in 1999 it was Russia) and

justification for military action was implicit in previous Security Council resolutions, member

states who were prepared to use force could claim to be acting on behalf of the international

community. That was the lesson of Kosovo and while the legal argument on Iraq revolved

around the terms of the 1991 ceasfire and not humanitarian intervention Blair would have

been able to recall his 1999 arguments for bypassing the Security Council when giving the

order to use of force in 2003. Indeed, by arguing that this time the French were acting

unreasonably when they threatened to veto the proposed resolution of March 2003 and by

relying on the Attorney General’s advice that the invasion had legal authority in previous

resolutions, that is exactly what Blair did. Like the military action against Yugoslavia, the

invasion of Iraq would be done in the name of the international community.

This chapter proceeds in six sections. The first two outline the importance of the

concept of international community to Tony Blair’s world view both in the pre- and post-9/11

periods. The second section highlights how these ideas sat uncomfortably alongside the

opinions of the Bush administration. Bush’s foreign policy was heavily influenced by

individuals, sometimes referred to as the ‘neo-cons’, who were determined not to be

restrained by international law as they set out to defend American supremacy against great

power challenge and to protect the American homeland against terrorist attack. The third

section examines in more detail the arguments of why Tony Blair supported Bush’s policy of

distinction is affected by the Iraq war see Barry Buzan and Ana Gonzalez-Palaez, ‘“International community” after Iraq’, International Affairs, vol.81 no.1 (2005), pp.31-52. 7 Prime Minister's speech: Doctrine of the International community at the Economic Club, Chicago - 24 April 1999 available at: <http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1297.asp>.

4

removing Saddam Hussein and his efforts to persuade the American President to seek a

further UN resolution that would explicitly authorise the use of force. What is clear is that if

Blair was himself convinced of the need for regime change and if it was his intention to use

the issue of WMDs as the legal cover for such action he never clearly stated that to the British

people. The confused public message stemmed in part from the difficulty of the task he had

set himself, which was on the one hand to commit to a policy of regime change by military

force if necessary and on the other to secure legal authority for an invasion based on Iraq’s

failure to disarm. The fourth and fifth sections focus on the manner in which Blair advanced

toward, and then retreated, from the aim of securing explicit UN authorisation for the

invasion. While the government claimed from February 2003 that such a resolution was not

needed to go to war – it was they insisted merely a political exercise to rally support for the

war8 – the impression was created that Blair was now relying on a legal position he had

previously accepted as inadequate. In this respect Blair did much damage to the idea of an

international community based on the rule of law. The normative implication of his action is

that international law is not a means of articulating a consensus on what is held to be in the

universal interest. Rather it is a rhetorical device that offers post hoc legitimation to the

particular interpretations and interests of the powerful.

Blair’s world view pre-911: the ‘new doctrine of international community’.

A concept of community is at the core of Blair’s political beliefs. In contrast to the

extremes of Thatcherite individualism, which declared that there was ‘no such thing as

society’, and socialist communitarianism, which rejects individual liberty, the so-called ‘third-

way’ envisioned a society whose members have rights and responsibilities. Such concepts do

not easily translate into the international arena, where selfish national interests and power

politics are often thought to dominate. Yet the idea of rights and responsibilities did find their

way into the discourse of British foreign policy after Labour was elected to government in

1997.9 During the Kosovo campaign Blair gave added definition to the so-called ‘ethical

dimension’ of British foreign policy. The ‘new doctrine of international community’ was

defined in his speech in Chicago on 22nd April 1999.

8 On 17 February 2003, the UK Foreign Secretary stated that 'in terms of mandate resolution 1441 gives us the authority we need, but in terms of political desirability we have always said that we would prefer a second resolution'. S. Castle, 'France set to block second UN resolution against Iraq', The Independent, 18 February 2003. 9 David Coates and Joel Krieger (with Rhiannon Vickers), Blair’s War, Polity, 2004, pp.9-21. For a rather dismissive view of this aspect of New Labour’s foreign policy see Mark Curtis, ‘Britain’s Real Foreign Policy and the Failure of British Academia’, International Relations Vol.18, No.3, September 2004, pp.275-288.

5

This speech was delivered at the height of NATO’s bombing campaign against the

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. His tough stance against Milosevic had been informed by

the period of soul-searching, which had taken place across the humanitarian community

following massacres in Srebrenica and Rwanda. According to John Kampfner, Blair had read

the Secretary-General’s 1999 report on Srebrenica. It had denounced the view held by UN

peacekeeping forces, which saw the violence in the Balkans as a civil war between morally

equivalent combatants.10 Blair was thus predisposed to Secretary of State, Madeleine

Albright’s view that NATO should act to stop further atrocities in the Balkans even if the

Security Council could not agree that military action was appropriate. Any doubts about

going to war without Security Council backing would have been cancelled out by the

argument that the UN had not always been effective in the past and should not always be

relied on to come up with the most appropriate response to humanitarian crises in the future.

For Blair then NATO’s cause in Kosovo was just. ‘We cannot let the evil of ethnic

cleansing stand. We must not rest until it is reversed’, he told his Chicago audience. Yet the

lack of authorisation from a properly constituted public authority, a key requirement of the

just war tradition, was never really addressed. One might argue that as a regional alliance

NATO was properly constituted to deal with a European crisis.11 This, however, ignores two

things: firstly the action was in fact ‘out-of area’ for NATO; and secondly, NATO cannot

simply opt out of the legal framework provided by the UN Charter and even if it could such

regional distinctions would have prevented Blair claiming universal legitimacy with the label

‘international community’. As it was Blair’s rhetoric did not imply action on behalf of a

European, transatlantic or any other regional community. Rather it claimed universal

legitimacy despite the fact that Russia, China and India amongst others opposed the action. It

was clear then that for Blair ‘the international community’ was not synonymous with the

United Nations Security Council. States would, or at least should respond to the increased

interdependence of globalisation by defining their particular interests in terms of the wider

international interest, but there was little indication of how that idea of the common good

would be formulated or who would speak for it.12

10 Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p.37. For the report see United Nations (1999), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General-Assembly Resolution 53/35. The Fall of Srebrenica. Found at: <http://www.un.org/peace/srebrenica.pdf>. Kampfner gives the impression Blair had read the report before the action in Kosovo. If this is the case he would have had access to it before its general distribution date of 15 November, 1999. 11 As US Under Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, put it 'we must be careful not to subordinate NATO to any other international body'. Cited in N.D. White, ‘The legality of bombing in the name of humanity’, Journal of Conflict and Security Law, June 2000. 12 Andrew Linklater touches on this problem when describing Blair’s five tests for a legitimate intervention, as set out in the Chicago speech. Blair stated that states should ask first, are we sure of our case? Second, have we exhausted all other options? Third, is the proposed course of action workable? Fourth, are we committed to the region for the long term? Fifth, are national interests involved? A sixth test, Linklater suggested, might be are others sure of our case, our competence and our motives?

6

The legal argument offered at the time suggests NATO had gained ‘implicit

authorization’ from the UN Security Council to use force against Milosevic. Previous

resolutions had condemned the excessive use of force by the Serbian authorities and the

Security Council had, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, called upon all parties to end

the violence. Resolution 1199 of the 23 September 1998, for instance, warned of an

impending humanitarian catastrophe and decided that ‘further action and additional measures

to maintain and restore peace and stability in the region’ would be taken if the concrete

measure demanded in Resolution 1160 the previous March were not implemented.13 For the

British, these resolutions read alongside another Chapter VII resolution, which was passed in

October 1998, were sufficient to justify the use of force the following March.14 The Germans,

the Dutch, the Canadians and the Americans all supported this argument. Even the French,

who would later reject similar reasoning when it was applied to the Iraq war, supported the

British position. They argued in 1999 that military action was a response ‘to Belgrade’s

violation of its international obligations under the resolutions which the Security Council had

adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter’.15

Such arguments were of course less than ideal. Indeed the Select Foreign Affairs

Committee would ultimately conclude that NATO’s actions were of ‘dubious legality in the

current state of international law’.16 For more radical critics NATO’s arguments were

evidence only of the powerful states’ selective regard for international law. Such critics

doubted the existence of a true international community and interpreted NATO’s action

through the lens of ‘liberal imperialism’.17 For Blair, however, the existence of such a

community beyond the state, and indeed beyond the United Nations, was self-evident and the

accusations of imperialism were misplaced. His concern was not whether he had the right to

articulate universal values but whether states would incorporate those self-evident values into

their foreign policy. In a globalising world foreign policy had to be ‘guided by a more subtle

blend of mutual and self-interest and moral purpose in defending the values we cherish.’ He

argued that ‘in the end values and interests merge. If we can establish and spread the values

of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society then that is in our interests too.

The spread of our values makes us safer.’18

Andrew Linklater, ‘The good international citizen and the crisis in Kosovo’, in Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds.), Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention. Selective Indignation, Collective Action and International Citizenship, United Nations University Press, 2000, p.494. 13 UN Document, S/Res/1199, 23 September 1998 and S/Res/1160, (1998), 31 March, 1998. 14 UN Document S/Res/1203, 24 October, 1998. 15 3989th Meeting of the UN Security Council, 26 March, 1999. UN Document S/PV.3989. 16 Fourth Report on Kosovo (HC:28-I and 28-II, 2000), para.138. 17 See for example, Tariq Ali, ‘Springtime for NATO’ New Left Review 234, 1999. 18 Prime Minister's speech: Doctrine of the International community at the Economic Club, Chicago - 24 April 1999 available at: <http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1297.asp>.

7

For Blair, then, the main problem with international society was not how and by whom it

was defined. Rather the main problem was getting states, in particular the United States, to

commit to what he said it represented. There was, however, a hint that he recognised the

deeper tensions within his new doctrine of international community. The Russian threat to

veto NATO action against Yugoslavia may very well have been unreasonable given a

consensus in the Security Council supporting the use of force - a draft Russian resolution

condemning the air strikes was defeated 12 votes to 3 - but to proclaim a unilateral right of

intervention based on particular interpretations of previous resolutions was far from ideal and

could set a dangerous precedent. Blair acknowledged, therefore, that ‘a reconsideration of the

role, workings and decision-making process of the UN, and in particular the UN Security

Council’, was necessary.19

This acknowledgement might have reassured some that the use of force without explicit

authorisation from the UN was exceptional and justified only in the context of a massive

humanitarian emergency. Indeed, Blair’s recognition that the Kosovo intervention had

highlighted the need to reform the UN Security Council concurred with a definition of good

international citizenship put forward by Andrew Linklater. He suggests that ‘one of the

qualities of the good international citizen is the willingness to challenge the legitimacy of the

veto by irresponsible powers that are prepared to block international action to prevent human

rights violations.’ Rather than pose this challenge by ignoring the UN, however, the good

international citizen should ‘offer an explanation for failing to comply with existing

arrangements, and set in motion the search for new decision-making processes that will

defend international humanitarian law.’20

Whether Blair’s recognition of the need for UN reform helped legitimise NATO’s action

in Kosovo is debatable. What is clear, however, is that the role played by the UN in his new

doctrine of international community was problematic. On the one hand it was the only

organisation of universal reach that could articulate the values of an international society. On

the other hand the Security Council had shown itself to act unreasonably in the face of

egregious human rights abuses. By recognising the intellectual inconsistency and political

dangers of ignoring the UN, and by stating clearly that the UN Security Council needed

reform, however, one might argue that Blair’s argument on Kosovo was a brave attempt to

square this circle. As we shall see he made a similar attempt to reconcile the invasion of Iraq

with the doctrine of international community, but this time the Security Council was far from

19 Ibid. Václav Havel was more direct in his call for reform, arguing that it is necessary ‘to reconsider whether it is still appropriate, even hypothetically, that in the Security Council one country can outvote the rest of the world.’ New York Review of Books 10 June 1999, p.6. Quoted by Linklater, ‘The good international citizen’, p.495. For a consideration of these issues see Advisory Council on International Affairs, ‘Humanitarian Intervention’, Advisory Report No.13, 2000. Available at: < http://www.aiv-advice.nl/>.

8

being unreasonable. Rather it was Blair’s specific argument on Iraq that was unreasonable.

The threat posed by Iraq did not justify a repeat of his argument that under exceptional

circumstances states could use force without Security Council authorisation and still claim to

be acting on behalf of the international community.

Blair’s response to 9-11 and the continuing relevance of international community

The ideas of the principle foreign policymakers in the Bush Jnr. administration were

clearly at odds with any vision of an international community. Condoleezza Rice had

criticised President Clinton’s apparent commitment to international institutions, humanitarian

intervention and nation-building. The idea that America’s national interest was advanced

through the use of ‘soft power’ and the nurturing of international society was dismissed as

naïve.21 The discourse of globalisation in which Blair and Clinton had located their

worldview was seen as a distraction from the perennial challenge of great power politics. The

search for common international interests was portrayed as utopian by Bush’s appointees who

were more concerned about maintaining America’s dominant position in an international

system rather than its duties to an international society. America’s support of universal values

such as ‘freedom’ remained unchanged, but Bush’s foreign policy would be hard-edged and

would concentrate on ‘shaping a balance of power that favours freedom’.22 America would

remain engaged in the world, but this was a distinctly realist internationalism based on a

much narrower conception of the national interest than the liberal internationalism of the

Clinton administration.

It seems Blair’s early impression of the Bush administration mistook this change in US

foreign policy for neo-isolationism. What worried Blair, according to John Kampfner, was

not an ambitious unilateralism based on America’s military power rather it was ‘the fear of a

stay-at-home President, withdrawing from peacekeeping and other international obligations’.

At a meeting held to discuss strategy for the new administration, Blair apparently stated that

Britain had ‘to turn these people into internationalists’. 23 The thought that ‘these people’

were already internationalists, but not the kind that could support Blair’s broad vision of

international community had not, it seems, informed the initial perception.24 The

20 Linklater, ‘The good international citizen’, p.490. 21 On the concept of ‘soft power’ see Joseph S. Nye, Jr. The paradox of American power: why the world's only superpower can't go it alone, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002. 22 President George W. Bush's Inaugural Address, January 20, 2001, at: <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/inaugural-address.html>. 23 Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p.85. 24 As Daalder and Lindsay put it, the Bush administration’s foreign policy descended more from Senator Henry Cabot Lodge than from Senator William Borah. Both opposed President Wilson’s

9

unilateralism which followed – the withdrawal from the Kyoto regime on environmental

change, the policy of opposing the new International Criminal Court and the tariffs on

imported steel – was clearly inconsistent with the idea of nations working together to address

common problems.

On Iraq, however, there was little indication that the new administration was anxious to

radically change policy. National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice had stated that it

would be an objective ‘to deal decisively with the threat of rogue regimes and hostile

powers’, but it was last in a list of priorities and as far as Iraq was concerned she seemed

happy that it was being contained or would at least be deterred from using WMD. If it did

acquire such a capability, she argued, those weapons would be ‘unusable because any attempt

to use them will bring national obliteration’.25 Indeed Secretary of State Colin Powell

explicitly stated in March 2001 that because of the containment regime Saddam Hussein was

not a ‘full-fledged threat’.26 Nonetheless there were concerns that the policy needed revising.

Two days before the 9-11 attacks Bush discussed with senior advisers about how to apply

‘smart sanctions’ against Saddam’s regime. If containment of Iraq was an issue prior to 9-11

the US administration it seems did not conclude that it necessarily led to regime-change.

For some significant voices in the administration the terrorist attacks of 9-11 changed

these priorities. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz,

immediately sought to link the attacks to Saddam Hussein.27 Despite a lack of intelligence

proving such a link they proposed an invasion of Iraq as a direct response to the terrorist

attacks. Even though President Bush decided that targeting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in

Afghanistan was a more appropriate response, he started planning for the invasion of Iraq on

November 21, 2001, just 72 days after the 9/11 attacks.28 Given the lack of evidence linking

Iraq to Al Qaeda it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that ‘dealing decisively with the threat

of rogue regimes’ had always meant regime change and, if necessary a military invasion.29

commitment to the League of Nation, but where the latter did so because of a belief that the US remained secure in isolation, the former sought to maintain the freedom to act unilaterally in the international system. Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound. The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, Brookings Institution Press, 2003, pp.5-16. President Bush’s apparent interest in Theodore Roosevelt should also have indicated this. See Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, p.52. 25 Rice, Condoleezza, ‘Promoting the National Interest’, Foreign Affairs January/February 2000. 26 Cited by Lawrence Freedman, ‘War in Iraq: Selling the Threat’, Survival, Vol.46, No.2, Summer 2004, p.15. 27 Woodward, Bush at War p.49. Freedman, ‘War in Iraq’, p.17. 28 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Simon & Schuster, 2004, p.1. See also Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies. Inside America’s War on Terror, New York, The Free Press, 2004, p.31. 29 On the theories linking Iraq and al-Qaeda see Freedman, ‘War in Iraq’, pp.18-21. Paul O Neill, Bush’s first Treasury Secretary claimed that Bush had always intended to replace Saddam. Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2004, p.86. As Daalder and Lindsay put it: ‘The Bush philosophy instead turned John Quincy Adams on his head and argued that the United States should aggressively go abroad searching for monsters to destroy.’ America Unbound, p.13. Adams had of course famously declared on July 4, 1821 that America applauded those who fight for

10

What is clear is that the President saw in the post 9-11 / post-Afghanistan period an increased

need, as well as the political opportunity to implement such a policy.

Blair also saw opportunities in the post 9-11 period. Yet his aim was to revive the

doctrine of international community, which he had introduced at the height of the Kosovo

crisis. Blair now knew he would not have to worry about America retreating into

isolationism. As the attack on Pearl Harbor marked the beginning of a sixty year commitment

to internationalism, so the terrorist attacks of 9-11 removed any doubts about a resurgent

isolationism. He now sought to make sure that international engagement responded to his

ideals of international community.

Blair clearly had a knack of articulating the nation’s thoughts and concerns in moments of

tragedy. His words following the death of Princess Diana spoke for the nation at a time when

the Royal family was, perhaps understandably, unable to fulfil that role.30 As then, there was

following the events of 9-11, ‘a coming together’. The power of community Blair claimed

was now asserting itself. A growing cosmopolitan awareness was emerging from the

‘realisation of how fragile are our frontiers in the face of the world's new challenges’.

The discourse of globalisation, however, was less in tune with the perceptions of the new

Bush administration. In fact it was positively Clintonesque and the new administration had

committed itself to policies that were ‘anything-but-Clinton’.31 ‘Today’ Blair argued,

‘conflicts rarely stay within national boundaries’ and the only proper response was a

transformed sense of political community. He repeated the themes of his Chicago Speech.

The critics will say: but how can the world be a community? Nations act in their own self-interest. Of course they do. But what is the lesson of the financial markets, climate change, international terrorism, nuclear proliferation or world trade? It is that our self-interest and our mutual interests are today inextricably woven together. This is the politics of globalisation. I realise why people protest against globalisation. [… But…] the issue is not how to stop globalisation. The issue is how we use the power of community to combine it with justice.

Justice he made clear was not merely a question of punishing those guilty for the attacks on 9-

11. It had a much broader significance. Justice meant bringing

those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world. And I mean: freedom, not only in the narrow sense of personal liberty but in the broader sense of each individual having the economic and social freedom to develop their potential to the full. That is what community means, founded on the equal worth of all. The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant,

liberty and independence, ‘but she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.’ 30 Philip Stephens, Tony Blair. The Making of a Wold Leader, Viking, 2004, pp.7-8. 31 Riddell, Hug them Close, p.129.

11

those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.

To the Afghan people he made this commitment.

The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before.32

The UK would stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the US not only because the US was a

close ally, but because it had a duty to do so as a good international citizen. Implicit in his

rhetoric, moreover, was an understanding that the US could share this vision and an appeal to

the Bush administration to work with him toward achieving it.

People say: we are only acting because it's the USA that was attacked. Double standards, they say. But when Milosevic embarked on the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Kosovo, we acted. … And I tell you if Rwanda happened again today as it did in 1993 [sic.], when a million people were slaughtered in cold blood, we would have a moral duty to act there also. … We can't do it all. Neither can the Americans. But the power of the international community could, together, if it chose to. … What is the answer to the current crisis? Not isolationism but the world coming together with America as a community. … This is an extraordinary moment for progressive politics. Our values are the right ones for this age: the power of community, solidarity, the collective ability to further the individual's interests.33

The speech reassured the Labour Party, certain sections of which had been suspicious of US

foreign policy and at that time were particularly nervous about how a wounded America may

respond. American power, at least according to their leader, would work with the

international community in defeating terrorism. It would be, he assured them, a force for

progressive change in international politics.

32 Unfortunately the British government was left with the impression that the US did walk away from Afghanistan. In fact John Kampfner writes that Blair chose not to pressure Bush on the rebuilding of Afghanistan. By the New Year, he writes, ‘American minds were already elsewhere. Talk in Washington was of the start of ‘phase two’ in the war on terror…Afghanistan was now nothing more than encumbrance to the US. This would become a familiar pattern, with Blair entreating Bush to engage in a process of nation-building that was alien to him. It mattered little to the American President. He had moved on. It mattered a great deal to the British Prime Minister. But he would have to settle for much less.’ Kampfner, Blair’s War’s pp.146-151. 33 Tony Blair’s speech to the Labour Party Conference, 2 October, 2001, found at: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/>. For an indication of the different world views compare Blair’s statement on Rwanda, with Bush’s answer to the question of what he would do if another Rwanda occurred. ‘We should not’, he stated, ‘send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide in nations outside our strategic interests….I don’t like genocide and I don’t like ethnic cleansing, but the president must set clear parameters as to where troops ought to be used and when they ought to be used.’ George W. Bush, speaking on ABC’s This Week January 23, 2000. Quoted in Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, p.37.

12

Standing shoulder to shoulder with the Americans

Unlike the Chicago speech, Blair made no mention of the United Nations in his Brighton

speech. Indeed the role of the Security Council in responding to the 9-11 attacks was

something of a non-issue. Shortly after the attacks the Security Council recognised the US

right to self-defence and passed a resolution that in the eyes of some opened the door for

unlimited military action in the name of defeating terrorism.34 The international support for

the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, however, was such that this

kind of warning was not politically significant.35 The question of regime change in Iraq,

however, was a different matter. While the Prime Minister did not link Iraq to the 9-11

attacks he did make it clear as early as November 12, 2001 that ‘the time has come’ for

additional UN Security Council resolutions on Iraq.36

Blair had in fact committed himself to the policy of regime change in Iraq in 1998.37 In

October of that year the US Congress passed the Iraq Liberation act which sought to bring

about regime change by financing several Iraqi opposition groups. The following December

Blair told the House of Commons that ‘a broad objective of our policy is to remove Saddam

Hussein and to do all that we can to achieve that.’38 Yet that same month the US and the UK

had chosen a rather more limited objective for Operation Desert Fox. The four-day bombing

campaign was designed only ‘to degrade the ability of Saddam Hussein to build and use

weapons of mass destruction, including command and control and delivery systems, and to

diminish the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to his neighbours by weakening his military

capacity’.39 If Blair was pushing for regime change at this time he would, like the neo-

conservatives in Washington, have been disappointed with the Clinton administration’s

reluctance to go beyond containment.

For other authors UK policy did not become one of regime change until the policy of

containment typified by Desert Fox had been undermined. Doubts about that policy did not

34 Michael Byers, ‘Terror and the Future of International Law’ in Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (eds.), Worlds in Collision. Terror and the Future of Global Order, Palgrave, 2002, pp.118-127; Eric P.J. Myjer and Nigel D. White, ‘The Twin Towers Attack: An Unlimited Right to Self-Defence?’ Journal of Conflict and Security Law 2002 7: 5-17 35 On the role Blair played in helping to forge that consensus see Kampfner, pp.126-128. 36 Speech by the Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor's Banquet - 12 November 2001, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1661.asp. In this speech, and in contrast to President Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech the following January, Blair clearly distinguishes Iraq from Syria, Iran and ‘and other nations in the same position’. 37 Williams, British Foreign Policy forthcoming. 38 Hansard Commons, 17 December, 1998, col.1103, cited by Williams, British Foreign Policy forthcoming. 39 Ibid, col.1097

13

take long to surface after Desert Fox. For instance Bluth cites the May 1999 memorandum

from the Foreign and Defence Secretaries to the Cabinet Ministerial Committee on Defence

and Overseas Policy, which according to the Butler Report stressed doubts about the

effectiveness of the containment regime given the fact that there were no longer weapons

inspectors inside the country.40 This unsatisfactory situation was exacerbated by the

humanitarian condition of the Iraqi people under the sanctions regime. While the UK

government argued that it was the Iraqi government that was responsible for the human

suffering the memorandum made clear that the policy was difficult to justify to the public.41

For Bluth, regime change emerged within UK policy circles because of the absence of a

credible policy alternative. While the potential costs were clear, or at least should have been,

the costs of not going beyond containment were deemed to be greater.

If Blair had indeed reached this position before the change of administration in the US

one would expect to see not only frustration with the Clinton administration, one would also

expect to see the issue appear as a priority in his relations with the new Bush administration.

To support this view Blair himself notes that he had raised the issue of WMD with President

Bush at their first meeting in Camp David in February 2001.42 Yet Blair also claims that the

terrorist attack of September 11 was as a turning point in his thinking on Iraq policy. In his

testimony to the Butler inquiry on British intelligence, cited by both Bluth and Williams,

Blair echoed certain aspects of US thinking on the nexus between Al-Qaeda and rogue states

with WMD. He noted that

There was a lot to make me concerned about this and actually at the first meeting I had with George Bush in February 2001 I raised it with him but …after September 11th it took on a completely different aspect …what changed with September 11 was that I thought then you have to change your mindset … you have to go out and get after the different aspects of this threat … you have to deal this because otherwise the threat will grow … you have to take a stand, you have to say “Right we are not going to allow the development of WMD in breach of the will of the international community.43

40 Bluth, ‘The British Road to War’, pp.873-4. See Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, Review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, HC898 (London: House of Commons, 2004), [Hereafter the Butler Report], para.213-217; available at www.butlerreview.org.uk/report/index.asp . For details on the creation of the Inquiry that led to the Butler report see below. 41 See Press conference given by Prime Minister Tony Blair to Arab journalists - 19 October 2001 Available at: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1634.asp. On the costs of the sanctions regime see Eric Herring, ‘Between Iraq and a hard place: a critique of the British government's case for UN economic sanctions’ Review of International Studies Jan 2002, Vol.28, No.1, pp.39- 56. 42 Tony Blair speech to his Sedgefield constituency available at: < http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1162991,00.html>. The Butler Report also reinforces this view by referring four times to the general sense of a ‘creeping tide’ of proliferation. Para. 257, 259, 283, 425. 43 The Butler Report, para.257.

14

This clearly echoed the thinking of those in the Bush administration, notably Vice-

President Dick Cheney. Yet according to the argument put by Williams, Bluth and Blair

himself the Prime Minister was already convinced of the need for regime change before he

met Cheney in London on March 11, 2002 and Bush in Texas the following month.44 Indeed

a March 2002 document giving interdepartmental advice to Ministers noted that the British

objective was ‘the reintegration of a law-abiding Iraq, which does not possess WMD or

threaten its neighbours, into the international community. Implicitly, this cannot occur with

Saddam in power’.45

The problem with this interpretation of Blair’s thinking and the evolution of UK policy is

that it has difficulty answering two sets of questions. Firstly, if Blair had been so convinced

of the threat posed by Iraq before and immediately after 9-11 why did he, prior to Bush’s

decision to start planning for the invasion of Iraq, help persuade the President to focus on

Afghanistan as a response to 9-11?46 Why, did his counsel not support that of Paul

Wolfowitz, who, as noted above, sought to tie the 9-11 attacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime?

And if the threat of rogue states with weapons of mass destruction was the most obvious

lesson from the 9-11 attacks why did Blair fail to put the spotlight on Iraq? Why in fact did he

purposefully seek to deflect attention from it?47

Of the two sets of questions these are the least difficult to answer. In response one could

argue that Blair was merely picking his fights. He was anxious that the task of regime change

be completed in Afghanistan before turning to Iraq, which had been elevated in his priorities

by the events of 9-11. Indeed Blair only began to answer questions on Iraq with reference to

the second phase to the war on terrorism when it became clear that coalition forces would

prevail in Afghanistan.48 Moreover he did call for a new UN resolution on Iraq to provide for

the arms inspectors to return as early as 12 November, 2001, nine days before the President

started planning for the invasion.49 Such evidence would suggest that Blair was indeed

44 That Cheney was if anything preaching to the converted is implied by Seldon, Blair, pp.570-2. 45 The Butler report, para. 260. 46 See Patrick Wintour and Martin Kettle, ‘Brought to the brink of defeat – Part 1’ The Guardian, April 26, 2003. 47 British intelligence quickly established that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and the 9-11 attacks. See Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, pp.156-8. It seems Blair’s initial reaction was influenced by this view. For instance at a press conference on the 21st September Blair was asked: ‘Where do you see Iraq in all this? Are they in or are they out? There seemed to be some question of the Foreign Minister yesterday saying that it was nothing to do with them, and that previously there was support expressed .....’ Interrupting the questioner Blair stated: ‘We have made it clear all the way throughout that we proceed on the basis of evidence. We have identified who the prime suspect is.’ Prime Minister's briefing to the press en route to New York, 21 September 2001, see also st Prime Minister Tony Blair's interview with Al-Jazeera - 9 October 2001available at: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/48 See for example Edited transcript of an interview given by the Prime Minister Tony Blair for Larry King, CNN - 6 November 2001 at http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1643.asp 49 Speech by the Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor's Banquet - 12 November 2001, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1661.asp.

15

concerned about Iraq and that this concern evolved separately to what he knew about the

American planning process.

The second set of questions, however, are more difficult to answer. These stem from the

view that Blair should have been more critical of the intelligence on the Iraqi threat and

should have restrained rather than encouraged the US to pursue an imprudent policy of

regime change. Despite the fact that Blair claimed that he acted on the best intelligence

available it has been argued that Blair in fact selected the intelligence to suit a political

agenda that would be advanced by simply supporting America no matter what its policy was.

As UN weapons inspector Hans Blix put it, Blair ‘should have been more critical of

intelligence’. That capacity was lost because Blair, it is claimed, invented a ‘virtual reality’ to

suit his political agenda.50 The fact that British and American intelligence on the threat posed

by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction has largely been proven wrong has contributed to the

appeal of such arguments.

What alternative agenda might Blair have had? Some have argued that his decision to

support the American war was driven by domestic politics. The Prime Minister took pride in

the way he had reformed the Labour Party, which was once considered unelectable because of

a radical foreign policy agenda that opposed President Reagan’s defence build-up and

included unilateral nuclear disarmament. If Labour was to replace the Conservatives as ‘the

natural party of government’, so the argument goes, then Blair had to demonstrate that he

could work with a Republican administration in the US.51

This point was clearly on Blair’s mind even before the November 2000 Presidential

election and it had been reinforced by President Clinton’s advice that Blair not underestimate

George Bush and cultivate a close relationship with him.52 He did not, it seems, wish to

repeat the mistake that the Conservatives had made in 1992, which was to appear to be too

close to the Republicans at the cost of relations with President Clinton. Thus contact with

50 Quoted in Seldon, Blair, p.583. Lord Hutton put it rather more delicately. While he cleared the government of knowingly exaggerating intelligence he did note that the Prime Minister’s request for a document in September 2002 (discussed below) ‘consistent with the available intelligence’ but ‘as strong as possible in relations to the threat’ may have ‘subconsciously influenced’ those drafting it to make its wording ‘somewhat stronger than it would have been had it been contained in a normal JIC assessment’. See Freedman, ‘War in Iraq’, p.27. Hutton reached this conclusion despite the epistemological problem of proving subconscious influence and despite the fact that Blair’s political advisers were directly involved in the drafting of the government dossier on intelligence. The circumstances surrounding the Hutton Report are discussed below. The Butler Report was even more guarded. It noted: ‘The Government wanted a document which it could draw on in its advocacy of its policy. The JIC sought to offer a dispassionate assessment of intelligence and other material on Iraqi nuclear, biological, chemical and ballistic missile programmes. The JIC, with commendable motives, took responsibility for the dossier in order that its content should properly reflect the judgements of the intelligence community. They did their utmost to ensure that this standard was met. But this will have put strain on them in seeking to maintain their normal standards of neutral and objective assessment’ (para.79, repeated in 463). 51 Kampfner, Blair’s Wars p.161. 52 Seldon, Blair, pp.606-8, 611; Riddell, Hug them Close, p.2.

16

Republican hopefuls had been made as early as February 1998 when Blair’s adviser Sir

Christopher Meyer travelled to Texas to see George W. Bush, who at that time was

campaigning for re-election as Governor.53 Yet given the unpopularity of Blair’s decision to

support Bush’s war and given that the Prime Minister was almost forced to resign his own

position it is unlikely that electoral considerations played a major part in Blair’s thinking.

It has also been suggested that UK policy during this period had been recaptured by

‘Atlanticists’ who believed that the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US gave Britain

increased influence on the world stage. As Coates and Krieger note this view of Britain’s

identity, role and interests was a strong feature in Labour Party traditions. They demonstrate

that the anti-Americanism of what was dismissed as old Labour by Blairites was in fact

preceded by a pro-American, Atlanticist view, which had been typified by the post-War

Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin.54 It was this calculation of British interests by Blair that

blinded him to the weakness of the case for regime change and locked him into a conflict that,

for Coates and Krieger at least, was the wrong response to the security threats of the day.

There is evidence that backs this view of why Blair supported the American led invasion

of Iraq. For instance Michael Quinlan writes that

[t]here is more and more ground for suspecting that for Mr. Blair, facing extremely difficult decisions, the real bottom line was not this or that justification for action against Saddam but the combination of three judgements: first, that Mr Bush was intent on war; second, that nothing Britain could do would ultimately deflect him; third, that British national interest required that in the end we go along. Put another way, the question may have been not so much whether the arguments were good enough to warrant the huge step of starting a war as whether they were bad enough to warrant the huge step of breaking with the United States.55

Supporting this view is the evidence presented by Peter Stothard in his book 30 Days. He

reports the existence of a list of points drawn up by the Prime Minister in September 2002, ‘to

which he and his aides would regularly return’. As well as noting the threat posed by Saddam

Hussein, the list contained the following four points:

The people of the United States, still angered by the 11 September attacks, still sensing unfinished business from the first Gulf War twelve years before, would support a war on Iraq.

Gulf War 2 – President George W. Bush v.s. Saddam Hussein – would happen whatever anyone else said or did.

The people of Britain, continental Europe and most of the rest of the world would not even begin to support a war unless they had a say through the United Nations.

53 Riddell, Hug them Close, pp.87-88. 54 Coates and Krieger, Blair’s War, pp.124-9. 55 Quoted in Dunne, ‘When the shooting starts’, pp.907-908.

17

It would be more damaging to long term world peace and security if the Americans alone defeated Saddam Hussein than if they had international support to do so.56

Coates and Krieger, who cite the list in full, find this remarkable because it demonstrates

that Blair ‘was resigned to the inevitability of war’ as early as September 2002.57 Further

evidence to this effect is provided by Peter Riddell who cites Blair’s adviser Sir Christopher

Meyer. Like Quinlan he suggests that of all the justifications offered for UK policy, the only

significant question ‘was how to handle America.’58

What is equally remarkable about the four points listed above is the assumption that the

policy of regime change was an appropriate response to the threat posed by Iraq. As noted

above, Blair had reached this view prior to President Bush’s decision to launch a military

invasion. The fact that war was now a very real possibility did not cause Blair to reflect on

the advisability of that judgement. Even if he thought the war was inevitable, therefore, Blair

supported it not solely because he wanted to be alongside the Americans as they went into

battle but because he continued to believe it was the right thing to do. Still, the critics of the

Prime Minister’s decision argue that this reflects a remarkable lack of foresight into what

would replace the regime. As Lawrence Freedman puts it:

Far more effort was going in to making the case for regime change in Iraq than assessing its consequences. The impact on the country would go well beyond confirmed disarmament and achieving compliance with the UN. Yet while worse-case analysis was rampant on the subject of Iraq, WMD and terrorism, best-case analysis was equally dominant as to what would follow Saddam. A picture was painted of the inevitable triumph of democracy and prosperity.59

Such concerns should have made those who saw regime change as the only option reflect

on that conclusion. At the very least it required greater attention to the planning for a post war

Iraq. The British realisation that a UN mandate would at least help in the reconstruction

effort is more favourable in this regard than the apparent lack of post-war considerations in

the United States.

To conclude this section, it should be clear that Blair supported the American plan for war

not because he prioritised UK policy towards America over an independent policy on Iraq.

Rather he supported the American plan because it matched his own conclusion that regime

change was appropriate. He would seek to use whatever influence that gave him in the White

House to advance British interests. Expectations that Blair should have exercised better

56 Peter Stothard, 30 Days: A month at the Heart of Blair’s War (London: Harper Collins, 2003), p.87. 57 Coates and Krieger, Blair’s War, p.96. 58 Quoted by Riddell, Hug Them Close, p.195. See also Wintour and Kettle’s portrayal of Meyer’s advice in ‘Brought to the brink of defeat’. 59 Freedman, ‘War in Iraq’, p.34.

18

judgement in formulating his Iraq policy are justified, but it is not accurate to argue that

Blair’s decision was a product only of his policy towards the US. Besides, the reality is that

the UK achieved very little influence in return for its support of the White House. The British

media often highlighted a number of international issues, for example the detainees at

Guantanamo Bay and the so-called ‘roadmap’ to peace between Israel and Palestine, where

Blair might have expected a more supportive American stance given the UKs position on

Iraq. The Bush administration, however, was not as forthcoming as the UK would have

hoped. So Blair was right not to back the Americans without a reason. Those who thought

unconditional support gave Britain additional influence were mistaken.

The planning for the war itself proves this point. As Tim Dunne notes, ‘in return for

loyalty to the United States, Britain could influence only the timing not the content, of

decisions.’60 The ultimate cost of this for Dunne was the power of Blair’s own doctrine of

international community. Blair and his entourage never faced up to the ‘fundamental

incompatibility between Atlanticism and internationalism’, and instead chose to hold ‘on to

the myth that US power could be harnessed for the good of international society as a

whole’.61 While there is much to agree with in Dunne’s analysis it does leave out the means

by which Blair ultimately sought to justify the invasion in terms of international law and great

power responsibility. As the following section shows, he did this by recalling the idea of an

‘unreasonable veto’ which had been used to reconcile the intervention in Kosovo with his

doctrine of international community. That such arguments had been welcomed by liberal

internationalists in the past might suggest that Blair was not necessarily acting contrary to

their understanding of international community when he invaded Iraq in 2003.

The UN route.

The above analysis suggests that Blair had formulated a policy of regime change

independently of Washington, that he was aware the United States was itself committed to

such a policy, that he knew it stood a greater chance of success if it had broad international

backing and that he considered unilateral American action to be a threat to the idea of an

international community. Yet Blair also knew that regime change had no basis in

international law. This was made clear in the interdepartmental advice given to ministers in

March 2002. That document noted, in the words of the Butler Report, that ‘offensive military

action against Iraq could only be justified if Iraq were held to be in breach of United Nations

60 Dunne, When the shooting starts’, p.907. 61 Ibid, p.895.

19

Security Council Resolution 687, which imposed obligations on Iraq in regard to the

elimination of its prohibited weapons programmes.’62

This had been the legal argument used to justify the US-UK military action against Iraq in

December 1998. The UK had then argued that resolutions 1154 (2 March 1998) and

especially 1205 (5 November 1998) ‘implicitly revived the authorisation to use force given in

Resolution 678 (1990).’63 Yet even then this argument did not command much support. In

fact Japan was the only Security Council member to speak in support of the US and UK. Six

others spoke out against the UK stance. China called it ‘groundless’ and Russia argued that

the authority to use this kind of force simply did not exist in any of the Security Council

resolutions relating to Iraq.64 If the arguments based on Resolution 678 could not legitimise

the limited airstrikes in 1998 then it was highly unlikely that the Security Council would

accept regime change on that basis. If Blair was to claim that UK military action had the

backing of the international community then he would not only have to make a case for it

based simply on Saddam’s failure to disarm, he would also need a new Security Council

resolution clearly stating that.

At this point the public and private strategies begin to diverge. Blair in effect chose to

pursue in public the only legal strategy that was available to him (Saddam’s failure to disarm)

knowing that in private there was an additional objective (the removal of Saddam’s regime).

As he himself put it in July 2003:

The truth is that to take action we had to have the proper legal basis and that was through the weapons of mass destruction issue and the non-compliance with UN inspectors. What I have always said is that the relevance of the nature of the regime is that a regime that […] was otherwise benign but had weapons of mass destruction you might take a different attitude to than a regime that was so savage and repressive and had weapons of mass destruction. I accept entirely the legal basis for action was through weapons of mass destruction. 65

The two strategies were not necessarily inconsistent. As the document Iraq: Military

Campaign Objectives ultimately put it:

The obstacle to Iraq’s compliance with its disarmament obligations under relevant UNSCRs is the current regime, supported by the security forces under its control. The British government has therefore concluded that military action is necessary to enforce compliance and that it is therefore necessary that the current Iraqi regime be removed from power.66

62 The Butler Report, para.266. 63 Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK Ambassador to the UN, S/PV. 3955, 16 Dec. 1998, p.6. 64 S/PV. 2955, 16 Dec. 1998, p.5. 65 Parliamentary Liaison Committee 28th July 2003. 66 The Butler Report, Annex D.

20

Nor was it a foregone conclusion that such a stance would lead to war. The

understanding that disarmament and regime change were the same thing also implied a hope

that a rigorous weapons inspection process would lead to the internal collapse of Saddam’s

regime.67 Yet it was clearly understood that military force would probably be needed to

change the regime and the WMD issue would provide the legal cover for war. Indeed this

strategy had been laid out in the March 2002 interdepartmental document. Iraq would either

refuse to admit inspectors; or it would admit inspectors but obstruct them; or significant

quantities of WMD would be found.68 As Bluth notes, ‘in each of these three cases there

would be the justification for the use of force. Using inspections to disarm Iraq fully was not

considered a viable option.’69 Like Milosevic at Rambouillet,70 Saddam’s failure to accept

international conditions - in this case UN weapons inspections in the face of mounting

evidence that he possessed WMD - was to be Blair’s reason for war. Using the WMD threat

as the issue would legally justify and therefore lever support for the policy of regime change.

Such a strategy was exceptionally risky. It was vulnerable in three specific ways. Firstly

there was the (admittedly remote) possibility that Saddam Hussein might cooperate with the

inspection regime; and secondly there was the (very high) probability that member states of

the Security Council would not share Bush and Blair’s assessment of the WMD threat.

Finally, it would appear that by basing the justification for war on disarmament when the

actual reason for war was the nature of the regime, Blair would be accused of lying to the

British people. What made this strategy even riskier was the realisation in March of 2002 that

the intelligence available on Iraq’s WMD programme made for a rather unconvincing case.

Blair had considered presenting a dossier of information on the emerging threat to Parliament

prior to his Texas meeting with Bush in April 2002. However at that time Parliament was

beginning to show its concern towards the government’s policy on Iraq. On the 7th March 70

Labour MPs had signed a motion declaring that war would be unwise. Betraying a lack of

faith in his case Blair decided not to present the intelligence to Parliament.71 Given that the

67 This view was held by Sir Christopher Meyer who seemingly took it for granted that 100 per cent compliance with UN resolution on disarmament would be impossible with Saddam Hussein in power. The implication being that full compliance with disarmament conditions was the same as regime change. Riddell, Hug them Close, p.199. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK Ambassador to the UN, also held this view. He notes how he ‘always thought the combination of tough inspections, the military build up and catching Saddam red-handed with WMD would persuade the people around Saddam that this is not worth regime suicide.’ He prefaced this with the comment ‘maybe we were naïve’. Wintour and Kettle, ‘Brought to the Brink of Defeat – Part 2’. 68 The Butler Report, para.265. 69 Bluth, ‘The British road to war’, p.877. 70 On the contested role the Rambouillet conference played in the lead up to the Kosovo war see Marc Weller, ‘The Rambouillet Conference on Kosovo’, International Affairs, April 1999. 71 Seldon, Blair, p.573.

21

Joint Intelligence Committee had that same month described intelligence as ‘sporadic and

patchy’ it is unlikely that the dossier would have helped Blair’s case.72

The vulnerability of the strategy and the difficulties of communicating it publicly were

evident in Blair’s speech at the Bush presidential library in April 2002. This speech

contained many of the earlier themes of international community. Yet it also contained an

explicit reference to regime change ‘if necessary and justified’ without saying what role the

United Nations Security Council played in answering that question. Instead the Prime

Minister listed three conflicts involving regime change (Milosevic, the Taliban and Sierra

Leone) as if he was trying to justify his presence in a room full of neo-conservatives.73 The

political dilemma, however, was clear from the inconsistency contained within that speech.

On the one hand Blair spoke enthusiastically about regime change, yet on the other he implied

that all Saddam Hussein had to do to avoid war was ‘let the [weapons] inspectors back in,

anyone, any time, any place that the international community demands’.74

It was several months after the Texas meeting that Blair helped to convince Bush that he

should seek another resolution at the United Nations Security Council. In a personal letter to

the President at the end of July 2002 Blair seemed to backtrack on his support. According to

Kampfner, Blair ‘hinted, ever so gently, that without a UN resolution, Britain might not be

able to join a military campaign in Iraq’.75 Whether this had been part of an original plan

might be a matter of speculation. Blair may have sought to get Bush used to the UK’s support

and then say it was conditional on UN authorisation. It is more than likely, however, that it

reflected a realisation on Blair’s part that by encouraging regime change he was way out in

front of political and, for that matter, legal opinion.76 Either way Blair’s letter did influence

the President’s war plan. Up to that point the need for a new UN resolution was not a factor

in US planning, but over the summer vacation the President decided, against stiff opposition

72 The Butler Report, para.270. 73 Of course one might exclude the President’s father from that group. He had argued long after he had left office that the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be the wrong thing to do. See interview with Lord Douglas Hurd, The Search for Peace, BBC, 1997. This view was articulated in 2002 by Bush Snr.’s National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in ‘Don’t Attack Saddam’, Wall Street Journal 15 August, 2002. 74 President Bush Snr. Presidential Library on April 8, 2002, available at: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/documents/>. This contradiction persisted up to the point of war. As late as February 25, 2003, for instance, Blair told the House of Commons that he detested Saddam’s regime, but ‘even now he can save it by complying with the UN’s demand.’ Quoted in Riddell, Hug them Close, p.94. For a view that Blair would have accepted disarmament short of regime change see Wintour and Kettle, ‘Brought to the brink of defeat’. 75 Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p.192. 76 Seldon, Blair, p.576; Riddell, Hug them Close, pp.202-3. The Butler Report (para.287) notes that ‘work on legal issues’ had been commissioned at a meeting on 23 July. This was chaired by the Prime Minister and in attendance were Ministers and officials primarily involved in UK policy formulation and military contingency planning. It is likely that the personal letter to Bush was prompted by the result of this ‘work’.

22

from the Vice-President, to involve the Security Council.77 This was confirmed at a meeting

with Blair at Camp David on September 7, where Blair confirmed he would be a steadfast ally

in any military action that was required.78 That Blair had a major influence on this decision is

conceded by the President in Bob Woodward’s account of decision making inside the Bush

White House.79 Secretary of State Colin Powell had also been arguing along these lines,

which leads Seldon to conclude that ‘Blair’s role was not insignificant, but it affirmed the

way Bush’s mind had been moving.’80

The President’s intention to seek another resolution that would give explicit authorisation

for the use of force against Iraq was declared in his address to the UN General Assembly in

September.81 This was a victory for Blair. It became increasingly clear through the autumn

of 2002 however, that neither the Security Council, nor large sections of the British public

shared, Bush and Blair’s anxiety about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass

destruction. Despite the fact that little of significance had emerged over the summer Blair

presented to parliament an updated version of the dossier that he had withheld the previous

March.82 The September 2002 dossier gave details on chemical and biological weaponry that

had not been accounted for since the UN weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998. The

programme was said to be active, detailed and growing.83 In one sentence, which was to

become infamous, the dossier claimed that ‘the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical and

biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so’. It had the kind of effect, at least

in the short-term that Blair had hoped for. Newspaper headlines warned that British interests

in the Mediterranean were a mere 45 minutes away from attack.

It is important at this point to step back from the chronology to understand the long term

impact the September dossier had on British perceptions of Blair and his government. The

77 Cheney feared that the UN objective would be limited to getting the inspectors back into Iraq. This would merely ‘provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow “back in the box”.’ Remarks by Vice-President to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, 26 August, 2002. Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html. On the UK suspicion of Cheney see Wintour and Kettle, ‘Brought to the brink of defeat’. 78 Kampfner, Blair’s Wars pp.195-8. 79 Woodward, Plan of Attack, p.183. 80 Seldon, Blair, p.578. 81 President's Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002, available at: < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html>. The key sentence, ‘we will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions’, was included in the President’s speech even though it had slipped the autocue. Woodward, Plan of Attack, pp.183-4. 82 The Butler Report notes that additional intelligence did emerge in August and September. It also notes, however, that there is now doubt about the reliability of that intelligence (para.301, 355, 398). More significantly it notes (para.304) how the Inquiry was ‘struck by the relative thinness of the intelligence base supporting the greater firmness of the JIC’s judgements on Iraqi production and possession of chemical and biological weapons, especially the inferential nature of much of it.’ While the JIC secret assessments gave warnings about the limitations of this intelligence the September dossier did not make the public aware of them (para.331). 83 Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Assessment of the British Government, available at < http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/documents/>.

23

accusation that Blair and his communications director Alastair Campbell had lent on John

Scarlett, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and “sexed up” the intelligence

knowing that it was incorrect, led to an unprecedented battle between the government and the

BBC. When the source for the BBC’s story, the former UN weapons inspector Dr. David

Kelly, committed suicide in July 2003, Blair set up an inquiry under Lord Hutton. His report

cleared the government of knowingly exaggerating the intelligence, which in turn led to the

resignation of key figures at the BBC.84 There was a strong feeling amongst many, however,

that the Hutton report had been a whitewash. Blair it seems had been happy to live with the

mixed verdict until President Bush declared it his intention to set up an inquiry into why no

weapons of mass destruction had been found. His hand forced by decisions taken in

Washington, Blair agreed to a second inquiry this time to answer questions regarding British

intelligence chaired by Lord Butler. Butler delivered his report on July 14th, 2004.85 By this

time, however, those who had been happy to trust the intelligence on the threat posed by

Saddam, having gone through various stages of denial, now acknowledged that the

intelligence had been wrong. Blair’s political position, moreover, was now less vulnerable

and Butler’s criticism that the intelligence and the intelligence process were faulty lacked

significance. The 45 minute claim may have been based on a single uncorroborated source,

intelligence claiming Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, (a claim which made its way into

Bush’s State of the Union address), may have been false and the British government may

have actually plagiarised the work of a Ph.D. student in a later dossier, but the government

decided that these mistakes (unlike those of the BBC) were not worthy of resignations.86 This

lack of accountability was immensely damaging to British democracy.

None of this could have been foreseen in September 2002 when the dossier was released.

In the short term it helped Blair convince both the Security Council and the British Parliament

that Saddam Hussein had, in some way, to be dealt with. In November Blair was able to

secure a unanimous vote in favour of what became Resolution 1441 (2002), which warned

Iraq ‘that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its

obligations’.87 But again this was a temporary victory for Blair. Resolution 1441 is, of

84 Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly C.M.G. by Lord Hutton, 28th January, 2004. Available at: <http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/>. Also see note 51 for Hutton’s conclusion on the ‘sexing up’ allegation. 85 Available at: < http://www.butlerreview.org.uk/report/index.asp > Butler’s inquiry had been limited to the specific issue of WMDs and had not, much to the anger of the Liberal Democrats who withdrew their cooperation, examined the wider issues raised by the decision to go to war. That the Butler Inquiry stuck to this narrow remit is shown in para.263 of the Report. It refuses to cast judgement on the appropriateness of regime change by military means, which was apparently discussed in the March 2002 interdepartmental document. The Conservative Party had initially cooperated with the inquiry but then changed their minds. Their support for the war now seriously compromised their ability to exploit Blair’s weakness as any attempt to do so was dismissed as opportunistic. 86 Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p.265. 87 UN Document S/Res/1441 (2002) 8th November, 2002.

24

course a case study in the diplomatic art of creative ambiguity. For the Americans in

particular ‘serious consequences’ meant military action to change the regime in Baghdad. For

many other delegations, including the French, it meant actions short of war.88 Resolution

1441, in other words, only delayed the inevitable showdown which came in March of the

following year when Blair would try for a last time to get explicit authorisation from the

Security Council to use force against Iraq.89

Another unreasonable veto

By the end of November 2002 the diplomatic pressure on Saddam Hussein seemed to

work when weapons inspectors were allowed to return to Iraq. This was seized upon by the

anti-war movement as proof that the Iraqi threat could be dealt with in a manner short of war.

It was the thin end of the wedge that would undermine Blair’s strategy. His ultimate aim was

regime change even if his political and legal strategy was based on disarmament. Like Bush

he now had to hope that the process of cooperating with those inspectors would be so costly

for Saddam Hussein that it would lead to the internal collapse of his regime.90 By January

2003, however, it seems the President had made his mind up that the inspections would not

bring that about and he would have to go to war. There was hope among those that shared

this view that Hans Blix’s report to the UN on 27 January would be the trigger for war.91 In a

concession to Blair’s agenda, however, the President agreed at the end of January to push

back the winter timetable and have one more go at securing explicit authorisation from the

UN Security Council.92 This was despite the fact that the votes were clearly stacked against

him and Colin Powell’s presentation to the Security Council on February 5 did nothing to

alter that fact. To many the British and American case was unconvincing and if there was a

threat to international security it could be dealt with by a process of continuous weapons

88 Wintour and Kettle, Brought to the brink of defeat – Part 2’. 89 Up to January 2003 UK diplomacy was guided by the ‘conventional wisdom’ that the French would use their permanent status on the Security Council to dispute an issue but that they would ‘eventually come round’. See Seldon, Blair, p.587; Riddell, Hug them Close, p.233. The strong advocate of this view according to Wintour and Kettle was Michael Williams, Jack Straw’s special adviser at the Foreign Office. 90 In this respect Blair shared the view expressed by Meyer and Greenstock, see note 63. Despite his public statements that Saddam Hussein could avoid war by disarming Blair noted a year after the invasion that his view had been ‘that if the UN had come together and delivered a tough ultimatum to Saddam, listing clearly what he had to do, benchmarking it, he may have folded and events set in train that might just and eventually have led to his departure from power.’ Speech to his Sedgefield constituency, March 5, 2004, available at: < http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/>. 91 Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, pp.258-264. 92 Woodward, Plan of Attack, p.297.

25

inspections.93 This feeling was echoed on the streets of Britain. February 15 saw the biggest

demonstration in British history as people marched in London and elsewhere to stop the war.

Eleven days later 121 Labour MPs defied the Party whip and voted for an amendment arguing

that ‘the case for military action is as yet unproven’.94

Fearful that without the second resolution there would be regime change in Westminster,

Bush had suggested to Blair on March 9 that he might wish to drop out of the coalition.95

Indeed Donald Rumsfeld had publicly suggested that the US would be prepared to go to war

without the UK if Blair could not persuade Parliament. Blair, however, remained committed

to his side of the deal they had made in September at Camp David. Coates and Krieger argue

that Blair’s previous argument for war had made this decision inevitable. His public

statements had locked him and the UK into a path of confrontation. Like Dunne, they

conclude, that the decision to take part in the invasion without having made the case at the

Security Council was a betrayal of Blair’s own doctrine of the international community.96 On

March 10th, however, President Chirac gave Blair the opportunity to claim that he and

President Bush were in fact continuing to act on behalf of the international community.

Chirac made it clear in an interview on French television that he would veto any second

resolution. Blair seized on the statement with a rhetorical move that had been used to justify

military action in the past. Chirac’s threat to use the veto, he argued, was like the Russian

threat to veto NATO action against Yugoslavia. It was ‘unreasonable’.97

While others, not least the Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Michael Boyce, may have

agreed with this analysis of the French position they were less happy at the prospect of

fighting a war, which might be considered by some to be illegal.98 On the same day that

Chirac made his statement Boyce demanded an unequivocal one-line note from the Attorney-

93 Freedman gives a detailed account of the reaction to Powell’s presentation, see ‘War in Iraq’, pp.32-33. 94 The amendment was defeated thanks to the support of Conservative MPs. Riddell, Hug them Close, p.247. 95 Woodward, Plan of Attack, p.338. 96 Coates and Krieger, Blair’s War, pp.124-9. 97 Blair had been thinking along these lines for some weeks. For instance he refused to reassure viewers of BBC 2’s Newsnight that he would be bound by the veto of a second resolution. ‘Supposing in circumstances where there was a clear breach of Resolution 1441’, he argued, ‘and everyone else wished to take action, one put down a veto. In those circumstances it would be unreasonable. Then it would be wrong because otherwise you couldn’t uphold the UN. Because you’d have passed your resolution and then you’d have failed to act on it’. Tony Blair on Newsnight - part one Friday February 7, 2003, available at http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/. The problem for Blair, of course, was that ‘everyone else’, did not wish to take military action. 98 The military were not the only ones concerned about this. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is said to have reflected the views of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when he suggested to Blair on the 16th March that without a second resolution Britain’s support for the US should stop short of military engagement. Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p.303.

26

General saying the war was legal.99 The legal opinion was delivered by the Attorney General,

Lord Goldsmith to the Cabinet a week later. Authority for the use of force against Iraq it was

claimed was contained in Resolutions 678 (1990), 687 (1991) and 1441 (2002).100 At first

sight such an argument looks dependent on ‘doctrine of implied authority’, the kind which the

UK used to justify its military action against Yugoslavia in 1999. Yet as Adam Roberts notes

there is a subtle and important difference. ‘In 1999’ he writes,

the UN Security Council had not specifically authorised the use of force against Serbia, whereas in November 1990 it had authorised [in Resolution 678] force against Iraq. The question regarding Iraq in 2003 was whether that authority dating back to 1990 could be said to have continued or resumed. Thus what was at issue regarding Iraq in 2003 was as much a claim of ‘existing authority’ or ‘continuing authority’ as of ‘implied authority’.101

For Blair the legal opinion was enough to secure the support of the military and

Parliament. In a vote on 19th March, only 217 MPs voted in favour of a resolution opposing

the government’s policy on Iraq. Only 139 Labour MPs defied the Party whip. In total 396

MPs supported Blair.102 The fact that so many MPs were convinced did not make the legal

argument a strong one. Questions remain concerning the doctrines of ‘implied’, ‘revived’ and

‘continuing authority’. For instance Roberts asks whether or not ‘the current views of the

Council, which in March 2003 were, for the most part, against the use of force, trump its past

authorisations?’ While he concludes that the idea of continuing authority is ‘fundamentally

strong’ he doubts whether its particular invocation in this crisis was valid ‘especially in view

of the doubtful quality of the evidence that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass

destruction’.103 Others have argued that the negotiating record of Resolution 1441 (2002)

99 The General’s demand for a legal opinion was apparently prompted by a need to ensure that military chiefs and their soldiers would not be ‘put through the mill’ at the International Criminal Court. (The Observer, March 7, 2004). If this is the case then it shows a remarkable lack of awareness of what the ICC can and cannot do. Even if the act of going to war was deemed legal, the Court could still exercise jurisdiction over British forces for acts committed in the conduct of the war if those acts constituted war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. The legality of going to war has no bearing on this. Besides, even if the Court’s Independent Prosecutor disagreed with the Attorney General and argued that the war was illegal he could not exercise jurisdiction over the act of going to war as the Court does not, for the time being, exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. See Article 5 (2) of the Rome Statute. 100 The Butler Report, para. 386. On the same day the Foreign Secretary gave a more detailed statement, which is contained in Annex D of the Butler Report. 101 Adam Roberts, ‘Law and the Use of Force after Iraq’, Survival Vol.45 No.2 Summer 2003, p.43. 102 Woodward suggests Cheney and Karl Rove may have contacted the Conservatives to urge them to support Blair and the war, p.342. Riddell suggests contact was made and that Bush sent the Tory leader a warm message of thanks following Blair’s victory. Riddell, Hug them Close, p.254. 103 Roberts, ‘Law and the Use of Force after Iraq’, p.44. In contrast, Vaughan Lowe argues that there is no known doctrine of the revival of Security Council resolutions on which some implied revival could be based. ‘The Iraq Crisis: What Now? International Comparative Law Quarterly 52 (October 2003).

27

made it clear that it was not the intention of the Council to revive an authority to use ‘all

necessary means’ if Iraq was found to be in breach of its obligations.104

In March 2003 Goldsmith’s argument was widely contested across the legal profession

and from within government.105 It did, however, leave Blair’s political opponents in a

difficult position and recovered a possible link to Blair’s doctrine of the international

community. Both Robin Cook as Foreign Secretary and Clare Short as International

Development Secretary had supported the use of force against Yugoslavia in 1999 despite its

lack of explicit Security Council authorisations. Yet Short and Cook (who was now Leader

of the House of Commons) had grave reservations about going to war against Iraq without the

second resolution.106 Were they being inconsistent? After all Cook had argued in July 2000

that the UK

104 N.D.White and E.P.J.Myjer, ‘Editorial: The Use of Force Against Iraq’, Journal of Conflict Security Law 2003 8: 1-14. White and Myjer also argue that by stating the council ‘decides the remain seized of the matter and to take such further steps as may be required for the implementation of this resolution and to secure peace and security to the area’, Resolution 687 effectively revoked the authority in 678 to restore 'international peace and security to the area’. 105 That ‘there was disagreement inside the FCO on whether a further decision of the Security Council would be needed before the UK could lawfully use force against Iraq’ is acknowledged in the Butler Report, para375. Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned her job as a deputy legal adviser in the FCO in April 2003 because she did not agree that the use of force against Iraq was lawful. Chatham House Press Release 27 February 2004. On the 7 March, 2003, 16 international lawyers signed a letter which argued that going to war without a second resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force would be illegal. The letter was sent to Downing Street. See Duncan Campbell, Michael White and Patrick Wintour, ‘No case for military action, lawyers tell Blair’, The Guardian, March 7, 2003. Christopher Greenwood, Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics did not sign the letter and publicly argued in favour of the Attorney General’s opinion. See Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Law unto themselves’, The Guardian March 14, 2003. Kampfner implies that it was from Greenwood that the Attorney-General got the legal argument to justify the war. Blair’s Wars, p.379. In November, 2002 Matrix Chambers, the legal practice founded by the Prime Minister’s wife, Cherie Blair, prepared a legal opinion for CND, which stated that the UK would be in breach of international law if it were to use force against Iraq without a further Security Council resolution. Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p.304. Another indication of the lack of confidence in the legal argument came in February 2004 with the trial of Katherine Gun, a translator at GCHQ listening centre. Gun was accused of disclosing secret documents to the press before the war. Her defence team argued that she was trying to prevent an illegal war. Rather than stand by the Attorney-General’s argument that the war was in fact legal the prosecution withdraw the case against Gun. 106 See Robin Cook, ‘Why I had to leave the Cabinet’, The Guardian 18th March 2003. Cook, who had been personally briefed by head of the JIC John Scarlett, had spoken in Cabinet on the 13th March about the need to gain a second UN resolution. Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, pp.294 and 298-301. He eventually resigned as Leader of the House on the day the Attorney General delivered his advice to the Cabinet. The Attorney General apparently delivered his opinion in the seat vacated by Cook. The suggestion that Cook’s resignation was inspired by a personal anger at the Blair for the way he had been treated in the past see Wintour and Kettle, ‘Brought to the brink of defeat’. Having earlier described Blair as ‘reckless’, Short did not resign on the understanding that the reconstruction of Iraq would receive a UN mandate and Bush would move on the ‘road map’ to Palestinian statehood. She eventually resigned on 13th May because these promises were replaced by a triumphalist attitude in Downing Street and because the US had no interest in meeting its obligations under the Geneva Conventions or a UN resolution authorising the reconstruction of Iraq. Clare Short, ‘How the Prime Minister deceived us’, The New Statesman 9 June, 2003, pp.19-21. Two other ministers John Denham at the Home Office and Lord Hunt, a junior health minister, resigned over the war. We now know that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also had reservations, although they had more to do with the

28

would act on the principle that a UN member state should not be able to plead its sovereign rights to shield conduct which is inconsistent with its obligations as a member of the UN….Just such circumstances arose in Kosovo. Regrettably, the threat of the veto by two of the Permanent Members made Security Council action impossible despite majority support for our cause. But under these exceptional circumstances, we were still justified, in every respect, in intervening as we did … .107

Replace ‘Kosovo’ with ‘Iraq’ and ‘two of the Permanent Members’ with ‘France’ and this

could have been Tony Blair speaking in March 2003. In defence of Cook’s position,

however, it must be understood that the two situations were completely different. As Cook

made clear in a devastating resignation speech to the House of Commons, he had studied the

issue on its particular merits. Neither the threat posed by Saddam to regional security nor the

humanitarian situation made this an ‘exceptional circumstance’.108 The French threat to veto

the second resolution, in other words, was not unreasonable. As Cook himself put it:

It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspection; Russia wants more time for inspection; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum necessary to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac. The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner – not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council.109

It is claimed by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK’s Ambassador to the UN during this period,

that the intense efforts to get a second resolution were successful to the extent that they

prevented the tabling of a resolution condemning the invasion.110 This would have put the

UK in an awkward position of having to use its veto having accused the French of acting

unreasonably when it threatened to use its. Yet this ‘success’ also denied the UK the kind of

opportunity afforded them by the Russian draft resolution condemning NATO’s use of force

against Yugoslavia in 1999. As noted above, that draft resolution was clearly defeated by a

effectiveness of military action rather than its legality. See Francis Elliott, ‘Blair told Bush he “would not budge” in support for war’, The Independent on Sunday 19 September, 2004. 107 ‘Guiding Humanitarian Intervention’, Speech by the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook at the American Bar Association Lunch, London, 19th July, 2000. 108 Born out of a concern that humanitarian intervention was being abused by the coalition Human Rights Watch released a report in January 2004 which countered claims being made that the Iraq war could have been justified on humanitarian grounds. See Ken Roth, ‘War in Iraq: Not a humanitarian intervention’, available at: <http://www.hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm>. 109 House of Commons, March 17. Privately this interpretation of the voting intentions of UN members was confirmed by the UK Ambassador to the UN Sir Jeremy Greenstock. See Wintour and Kettle ‘Brought to the brink of defeat’. 110 Seldon, Blair, p.588. In this respect ‘the use of force may be legally precarious, but it is not self-evidently … illegal’. Roberts, ‘The Use of Force after Iraq’, p.38.

29

vote of 12-3. Only China and Namibia joined Russia in voting for the resolution.111 That

vote might be interpreted as giving NATO’s use of military force a legitimacy that is

grounded in the votes of those on the Security Council and not simply on the humanitarian

claims made by NATO allies.112 The fact that no such vote was cast at the Security Council

in 2003 should not, therefore, be regarded as a success for UK diplomacy. Rather it is

another reminder that they were not able to convince a majority of the members on the

Security Council that the war was necessary.

Conclusion

It is hard to avoid the conclusion therefore that Blair did indeed betray ‘the new doctrine

of international community’ when he committed UK forces to the invasion of Iraq. He had

decided in 2002 that a military invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime would

require additional Security Council resolutions to give the coalition clear authority to use

force. Yet the failure to gain explicit authorisation was not seen as evidence that the

international community could not agree to regime change, rather it was interpreted by Blair

as evidence that those offering an alternative view were being unreasonable. Blair then relied

on a legal argument he had earlier dismissed as inadequate. His claim that the French were

the only reason why the UK could not gain UN authorisation for the war recalled the way in

which NATO had (arguably) secured legitimacy for its military action against Yugoslavia in

1999. Yet the circumstances then were clearly different. Where NATO could claim majority

support in the Security Council by pointing to the defeat of the Russian resolution on Kosovo,

Blair could not make a similar claim over Iraq. Indeed it is likely that a resolution

condemning the invasion of Iraq would have secured a majority vote and in this case there

would have been many claiming that the inevitable British veto would have been, by Blair’s

own standards, ‘unreasonable’.

The legal justification put forward by the UK government was necessary for Blair. This

necessity was certainly felt politically and probably manifested itself intellectually also. As

this chapter has demonstrated there were serious concerns at the highest levels of the political

establishment that the invasion was illegal and that the UK could not possibly engage in such

an action. Blair was well aware of this early on in the diplomatic process and he knew that he

would need further UN resolutions to take his country to war. In fact his foreign policy up to

the Iraq crisis had done much to encourage this understanding of the UKs role in the world.

111 UN doc. S/1999/328. 112 Adam Roberts describes this vote as giving NATO ‘at least a crumb of legal comfort’. Adam Roberts, ‘NATO’s “Humanitarian War” over Kosovo’, Survival, Vol.41, No.3 Autumn 1999, p.105. For the argument that this still does not equate to legal authorisation, see White, ‘The legality of bombing in the name of humanity’.

30

Many had supported Blair when he argued that the UK should be a good citizen of

international society and should stick to and occasionally challenge (though not ignore) the

rules. Having done so much to foster this image of British identity it is likely that Blair would

have himself wanted UK actions to be seen as legitimate.

Despite convincing arguments that the war was not legal or legitimate Blair’s insistence

that the military action remained consistent with a doctrine of international community does

immense damage to the worldview that he has tried to cultivate. Of course he could not be

expected to argue differently, not yet at least. But his continued use of the rhetoric of

‘international community’, despite clear evidence that his policy failed to gain majority

support within the Security Council, gives political ammunition to the Realist view of

international relations, which he dismisses as too pessimistic. This unfortunately will be an

unwanted legacy of Blair’s foreign policy. His choice to rely on dubious legal reasoning

having once rejected it as inadequate, and his refusal to accept that the case for war had not

been made, undermines the idea of international society and emboldens its critics. The ‘new

doctrine of international community’ will be treated by historians with great scepticism.

Realists will argue with greater conviction that international law is merely what the great

powers say it is and Liberal internationalists will find it harder to refute the claim that

international society only exists so long as it does not conflict with the preconceived and non-

negotiable interests of the powerful. It is not what Tony Blair or his supporters would have

wanted.

31